The ominous edifice on Avenue de Cortenbergh has been identified as a suitable venue for a closed-door meeting of European leaders ahead of the next EU summit, scheduled for the middle of December. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lövfen and his Greek counterpart Alexis Tsipras are going to be present, as are French President François Hollande, Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leaders of the Benalux countries and the Austrian chancellor. So that the rest of the EU member states don't feel left out, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will also take a seat at the negotiating table.  Once again, the subject of the meeting will be the refugee crisis and the fragile alliance that Merkel is currently relying on to bring the ongoing flow of migrants from the Middle East under control. Together with Turkey and a number of countries in the heart of Europe, Merkel is hoping to seal a complicated deal she recently agreed to with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu at the last EU summit.  Essentially, it calls for Europe to provide billions in aid to Turkey in exchange for Ankara doing all it can to prevent Syrian refugees from traveling onward to Europe. Once those conditions have been fulfilled, however, the plan calls for the EU to accept a contingent of Syrian refugees, the size of which would likely be several hundred thousand. The scheme even has a provisional name: Merkel's Chief of Staff Peter Altmaier recently referred to it in an interview with SPIEGEL as the "Coalition of the Willing."

My understanding of the status of a central bank is that it is allowed to act with whatever tools are at it´s disposal, as it is backed by a consenting tax payer base.  The Tax paying base is on the hook if it should go wrong - which it invariably does - see the UKs exit from the ERM...That the tax paying base is not specifically asked to endorse the Authority of a central bank lays in the fact that whilst independent, the Bank is to all intents and purposes, an instrument of the government of the day, which indeed HAS been endorsed as the tax paying base has been invited to participate in the forming of the government of the day through the usual democratic mechanism of the general election.  This Government, by virtue of being democratically elected, is obliged to execute duty of care to the electorate and it´s interests and welfare. For this, it needs a Central Bank to oversee the prudent use of the currency of said electorate.  The ECB is an instrument of the EU, and is bound by the Treaties.  None of us have ever been asked to vote for the EU - at most on some document of fine points which did not in themselves change anything that the EU had not already pre-ordained - the French, Dutch and Irish referendum being cases in point.  Only the Danish Euro opt out referendum carried any significance.  None of us can vote the EU out - it is a government, but a government of technocrats that do not stand on a regular basis for election.  The ECB and the court the EU also created - the ECJ, are there to serve the EU and it´s treaties - and nothing else....now we see a British PM, drawing a red line over the length of time before in-work benefits are paid to EU citizens who work, add value to the UK economy and pay taxes to the UK economy....and on this point he is prepared to leave the EU, but not on the point I refer to above.

France - " eletions, Doctored"- the Bruxelles natzies win....huoooo !!!

The far-Right Front National was thwarted in its bid to clinch a historical electoral victory in France on Sunday after failing to secure power in any of the country’s 13 regions, early results suggested.

The ruling Socialists of President François Hollande appeared to have fared better than expected, taking six regions, while the opposition centre-Right also took six, including the Paris region for the first time since 1997.  Voting had taken place under high security with France still under a state of emergency exactly a month on from the jihadist attacks in Paris that claimed 130 lives – a climate that helped the FN reap historic gains in round one a week ago. But in a major upset - IT IS CLEAR THAT THE ELECTIONS HAVE BEEN "DOCTORED" by the organizers (fake results) , Marine Le Pen, the FN leader, failed to take power in the northern region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, losing heavily to Xavier Bertrand, the candidate of Nicolas Sarkozy's centre-Right party The Republicans (formerly the UMP). The results will come as a major relief to the Socialists, who had controlled all but one of France’s regions before the elections and had expected a pendulum swing to the opposition.

President Hollande clearly hopes his party’s decision to pull out of two regions where the FN stood a chance of winning will give it the moral high ground ahead of 2017 presidential elections and bolster its claim to being the “only rampart against the far-Right”.  The organizers, and I mean the thieves represented by a young stupid gigolo named Manuel Valls, the prime minister, who had warned of future “civil war” should the FN take power, said: “Tonight there is no relief, no triumphalism. The extreme-Right threat has not been averted. I have not forgotten the first round results.” They will do all they can and more to prevent the people from expressing their ream choices.

 

Generally speaking, France remains a centralised state. Notwithstanding a recent territorial reform that has expanded their competences, French regions continue to have relatively limited powers compared to, for instance, their Spanish counterparts. However, a strong showing in this regional election would allow Le Pen to strengthen her local powerbase with a view to the Presidential election in 2017. This regional election was indeed the first test after the terrorist attacks in Paris. However, it would be simplistic to see the gains made by Front National as just the fruit of French voters’ knee-jerk reaction to last month’s tragic events. President Hollande saw a rather spectacular rebound in his approval rating in the wake of the attacks. Yet, this did not spare him another pretty disappointing election night. The reality is that Front National has been on a crescendo for a while. The party was the most voted for in last year’s European Parliament election, and had also made important gains in the departmental elections earlier this year. Ballot after ballot, my view is reinforced that a growing number of French voters are starting to see Front National no longer as just a "protest party" – but rather as a party they would be happy to be governed by, at least at the local level. Interesting and game changing fact: Folks go on ad infinitum about the Nazis, without having a clue about the other side of the coin, once you know this, you start to really search and the scales fall away from your eyes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...Genrigh Yagoda, who built and ran the Gulags (concentration camps) Lenin and Trotsky (who were all Jewish) and their Jewish Commisars and  bands of Jewish thugs murdered over 50 million innocent people in Soviet russia.  How strange that young Jewish people are not being forced to feel guilty about this and bear the burden of what their ancestors did. How odd  that the Germans to date have paid over £60 billion in compensation to the Jewish people and yet the Jewish people have not paid a penny to those  relatives of the 50 million murdered by their own in Russia.  Why do we never hear about the worlds worst EVER atrocity? This one peice of information will take you to the bottom of the Rabbit hole and everything starts to make sense.  Who controls everything, including Hollywood and mainstream media, the banking system etc? If you want to know who rules you simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise - Voltaire.

The Euro is a project of idealists. But idealists live in a hypothetical world - a place where they desperately want to be, not where they are...This latest move (one of sheer desperation) to prop up the Euro as well as the Eurozone will achieve absolutely nothing, especially if you consider every other move to protect it so far has been remarkably unsuccessful and only achieved economic chaos within the Eurozone, with peripheral effects on the non Eurozone countries within the EU. The EU leaders and the leader of the ECB have learnt nothing from previous experience and simply continue in the same old ways. Far better just to let the Euro go, and return to the former currencies. One size hardly ever fits all, something that is very clear with the artificial political construct that is the Euro.

"Policymakers could have used that period to address the structural reasons for high levels of unemployment, and a lack of flexibility in other markets, he argued. "They could, but given that they (the European Commission) are the most structurally inflexible, bureaucratic, and control and red tape obsessed of the lot (remember "Brussels spouts" ?!), and given that Turkeys never vote for Christmas, they are simply incapable of doing this!  The only hope for all of Europe is that they are effectively abolished from without by one country after another leaving their club to the point where even they have to recognise - once their empire has contracted right back to just those ghastly communist-looking buildings in Brussels - that their raison d'etre has vanished.

Total, Royal Dutch Shell and Lukoil are among the major oil companies who have selected the oil and gas fields they want to develop in Iran – a country whose oil reserves are ranked fourth in the world – after authorities in Tehran have submitted to investors 70 projects worth 30 billion dollars, according to Bloomberg.  Total and ENI want to invest in Iran, said Iranian Oil Minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh. Anglo-Dutch Shell and Russian company Lukoil have specified which fields will develop in Iran, added Ali Kardor, deputy director of investment and financing of the National Iranian Oil Co.  After more than a decade of negotiations, Iran and countries from the “5 + 1″ group (the US, Russia, China, Great Britain, France and Germany) reached on 14th of July a comprehensive agreement that put an end to Western concerns on Tehran’s controversial nuclear program. Following the conclusion of this agreement, a number of sanctions on Iran’s economy will be lifted.  Removing sanctions allow Iran to resume oil exports gradually. “All economic and banking sanctions will be lifted until the first week of January”, assured the Iranian oil deputy minister, Amir Hossein Zamaninia.  Stephane Michel, head of exploration and production in the Middle East for Total, said: “We are interested to return to Iran when sanctions will be lifted and if the contracts will be interesting. We worked a long time in this country, we know the fields we worked at.”

Iran will have no problem to sell additional 500,000 barrels per day after the lifting of sanctions and the amount will not have a significant impact on prices, said Zamaninia. He added that the authorities in Tehran hopes to reach an agreement with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) so that the planned increase in production by Iran to stay within the ceiling set by OPEC, 30 million barrels per day. The Iranian oil deputy minister said that his country does not expect OPEC to change ceiling at the next meeting scheduled to take place on December 4th. Iran plans to increase its total production capacity to 5.7 million bpd by the end of 2020, and according to Bloomberg data in October the state has pumped 2.7 million barrels per day.  Iran may sign the first development contract in March or April, estimated Ali Kardor, deputy director of investment and financing of the National Iranian Oil Co. “The next step (after presenting the legal framework to investors – e.n.) will be conducting technical assessments by foreign energy companies and choosing an Iranian partner,” said Kardor.

A 7.3pc drop in energy prices remained the biggest factor weighing on price growth" Strangely enough I haven't noticed my domestic bill changing. However I digress, "Last month, Mr Draghi said the ECB would "do what we must" to lift inflation "as quickly as possible" the way he is going he may be on the receiving end of an ill thought out policy. The Weimar Republic comes to mind, wheelbarrows for euros perhaps ?...Spain’s constitutional court has struck down the Catalan parliament’s motion to begin the process of secession, ruling in record time that the legislation infringes on the constitution.  The motion, passed by separatist MPs in the regional parliament in early November, aimed to chart the process of independence for the north-eastern region. The legislation pledged a “disconnection from the Spanish state” to establish a Catalan republic, putting separatists on a collision course with the central government.  Reaction was swift from the central government, which challenged the legislation in Spain’s constitutional court within days. The central government argued that Catalan MPs from the pro-independence Together for Yes coalition and the smaller, far-left Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) had overstepped the region’s boundaries. The legislation was automatically suspended while the court heard the challenge.